The last one I don't have a link for, because it was on TV, but there's discussions of building a 3D printer scaled to print out buildings in layers of concrete. Set it up at the site, hit print, and wait until your house is done.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Space is bad for you, even if you don't get directly exposed to it. Basically destroyed the immune systems of flies born in space. Except, if you have artificial gravity slightly beyond that of Earth, space is apparently good for you, so there's that.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Clearly the problem is capitalism, and has nothing to do with my requirements! And of course the obvious answer is socialism, the master system of meeting all people's specific needs perfectly!

In all seriousness, I am apparently good at finding things that I want that nobody makes. On the other side of the coin, many of these things are things that I can make myself, because engineer, and then make all the money, so it's alright I guess.

A few things I want that I probably can't throw together in my currently-imaginary garage workshop
-A watch with a Geiger counter in it that isn't $500-1500 and limited production (I want one, but not $500+ worth!)
-A pipe-insert version of those e-cigarette things, so I can (kind of) use the pipes I'm considering collecting without cancer, etc.

Hmm, not quite as many things that I can't make as I thought, although I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Now, if you'll pardon me, I'm off to work more on my job hunt so I can afford raw materials for the rest of the list!

Saturday, January 25, 2014

I wind up working in a lot of dark places where I need both hands and have no room to hang a work light (assuming I had one available). I usually wind up holding my Streamlight ProTach 1L in my mouth while I work, which doesn't work as well if I also need to talk to someone to ask for parts or whatever.

There are a few varieties of ear-mount flashlights, but none of them are what I'd call "minimalist"This one in particular is the most common one that I've seen, and seems the most useful.
I've found a couple glasses mount lights, but they're equally non-minimalist, and usually rather doofy looking to boot, in ways that might work on a pair of work glasses but not for every-day wear.

Has anyone come across a 1AAA or 1AAAA battery LED light? I'm thinking I might need to just make something myself (flashlights aren't particularly complex), designed to either attach to the temples of a pair of glasses or sit comfortably behind the ear like a pen or pencil.

Cap lights are aplenty, but I don't wear a compatible hat particularly often.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Whenever I build an interesting character with an interesting weapon, I want a copy of that weapon. Usually I tend towards practical weapons that actually work, and blades are a good bit cheaper than guns, but with blades as a collection thing it's much easier to find massive numbers of them. With guns, I can at least go "Ok, I need a gun to fill this role, can't buy anything else until I've filled all roles I still need guns for". Since the entire purpose behind everything beyond one good sturdy combat knife is "because why not/cool", there's no semblance of need involved. Just want. Lots of want.

At the moment, I want a second SOG Tactical tomahawk (Highly recommended, by the way. Works great, feels great), because the FancyZerker wields a pair of axes. More on that in some other post.
I also want pretty much every sword-machete made by Cold Steel. And their Grosse Messer, and Basket Hilt Broadsword. And training versions from them or other makers for everything. And more people to train with.

Seriously, every time I use a particular class of weapon in a game, I want one.

At least I'll have stuff to decorate my Dwarven fortress with when I build it...
(anyone can make an underground house, but they're usually ugly as sin, which is just wasted potential!)

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Just went from home to Rockford IL to Southfield MI and back to home in two days. All total, after weather (more on that in a sec) and such things, around 20 hours of driving. All time not spent driving was spent at interviews, with a short rest in a cheap hotel room, so not particularly relaxing.

Snow's, fine. I can drive in snow. What's less pleasant to drive in is surprise snow. Doesn't start to snow and gradually get worse and worse, just suddenly SNOW. From clean and clear to zero visibility in the blink of an eye. There were a LOT of cars beached, rolled, and slid into ditches. I kept my car within my and its limits. Those new tires it got relatively recently were darn nice.

When adventuring, maps are invaluable. Self-reading maps are a particularly great convenience. Should have gotten one long ago, but at least I got one while it's still useful for stuff instead of once I was all settled.

Having a car decide it would like to face a different direction than it is presently traveling seems like a good way to test the nerves of the driver. In that case, when my car decided to do so after the person in front of me stomped on the brakes on a slippery offramp, I passed the test with flying colors and barely an elevated heart rate. Car managed to make it 90 degrees before I got the wheels to grip again and brought back into my lane, but I kept it on the road and mostly in my lane so the few other cars could go around me easily.

Don't think I've ever seen as many semis as on 94 to/from Detroit.

And that's just the way out there.

On the way back, got caught in another instant snowstorm, narrowly avoided getting caught in that colossal traffic jam by Michigan City. Decided to pull off for some dinner and to use the restroom, saw traffic grind to a halt on literally the other side of the bridge from the offramp. Met a gentleman at the Pizza Hut, who offered me free pizza (it was the same price for a personal and the full size daily special, so he got it to share with any other refugees from the traffic), who turned out to be an engineer who was looking to hire more engineers. He also gave me directions to get around the traffic jam.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Folks have been waiting for this since the RFB was announced, I think.

I've had thoughts on doing that while thinking of ways to make a simpler ambidextrous bullpup. I like bullpups, and I like that they moved the magazine forwards slightly, which should help with balance a bit. Reloads will still be weird by comparison to standard pattern rifles, but sometimes compactness is very desirable.

I'll keep an eye out for one, when they're actually buy-able in 2-3 years. Should even have money for it then!

http://www.ncgunblog.com/2014/01/07/bullymoms-anti-gun-anti-freedom/
Moms Demand Whatever claims that they aren't extremists who want to ban everything, except that they believe that completely banning the sale of guns is the only common sense thing (I mean, you can still HAVE guns, if someone died and gave them to you! Heaven forbid you BUY them though!)

I've had my own run ins with leftists of extreme degree. Two people I knew from high school actually work for the Democrat party. My sister and her husband (both of who's parents were teachers) are also diehard "liberals", although working in a prison has helped my sis figure out that a lot of the laws that will supposedly fix everything forever are basically bullshit. Here are some things I've heard them say in debates, paraphrased but left as closely to what they said as I can remember;

"Defense against tyranny isn't a valid reason anymore. The government has so much power that if it wanted to by tyrannical, there's nothing anyone could do to stop it!" while arguing to give the government more power by disarming everyone.

"We already infringe upon a bunch of rights, so that's not a reason not to do it more!" while arguing that who cares about rights? Lets just infringe more upon the ones he doesn't like, instead of infringing on all of them less.

And of course, one of my favorites,
"I don't believe your facts" with regards to the Zimmerman bullshit
Must be nice to just invalidate any evidence that doesn't fit your worldview with the power of your belief.

Another good one was the claim, with no evidence of any kind, that background checks are inherently racist, and the only way to make them fair is to demand universal background checks.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

When you have to turn all the lights out to avoid getting bombed, you need to take measures to help folks get around. Honestly? I think the town looks better in stripes, gives a bit of something extra to what would otherwise just be bare concrete.

Been musing over it a while, was going to type it up because I was inspired by anti-gun Australians, then realized that 7+ hours of driving in one day, with less than optimal quantities of sleep, and an extra long interview have pretty much left my mental faculties nonfunctional.

I'll write something when I have the resting mental capacity to do more than stare blankly at a screen.

http://gizmodo.com/these-beautiful-solar-orbs-are-so-efficient-they-even-h-1500329295
high efficiency cheap solar panels. We'll see if they actually work remotely as well as they claim, but the design definitely looks to solve some old problems. Last I checked, photovoltaic panels have a threshold, below which they do nothing but take up space, and concentrating light with an orb (cheap) onto a small, high efficiency receptor (cheap-ish), is much more cost effective than trying to build a full size panel of the same stuff.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

I've found that a lot of people, both on blogs and that I know in person, have named at least one of their guns. The rule I've heard is your first gun needs a woman's name from the country of origin.

Usually weapons get either the name of a member of the opposite sex, or genderless. Presumably a gun named for the same gender is for homosexuals (Now I want something of vaguely Spanish origin named Enrique).

I have two guns with names, one of which I don't even own yet.

The first is my glock 17, Hammer. I'm not entirely sure when it received the name. I never consciously selected a name, or decided I was going to name it, or anything similar. It's just that Hammer is linked to it as a name in my mind. The only explanation I can come up with is that I began to carry the pistol while regularly playing as a Dwarven cleric. In case of trouble, I drew my hammer, that my character carried in a belt loop right where the Glock rides on my hip.

The other gun is Dragon Slayer, the .50 BMG I will someday purchase. This was decided while watching The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Once again, I didn't decide upon the name, it just kind of attached itself in my head to the eventual .50 BMG I will get.

So what guns do you have that have acquired names, deliberately chosen or otherwise, and how were those names selected?

AmericanMercenary takes a look Popehat's http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/ and asks the question a few others have "And then what?", and proceeds to elaborate on the problems involved with losing the system entirely. Read the whole thing, then the other whole thing that gets linked to, and whatnot and so on and so forth.

Essentially, when Mubarak's regime was falling, they turned loose all the prisoners as a "Hah, we'll show you!" and communities had to band together. To keep from completely degenerating into lawlessness, neighborhood watches and such had to be set up, and communities pretty much had to take over everything you'd normally expect to be taken care of by civilization.

That's the purpose of the Modern Militia.

Civilization is a precarious thing. It takes forever to erect, but can be toppled in very little time. Over and over through history, it has been seen that when society and civilization crumbles, it's a long time coming before it struggles back to its feet. The job of the militia is to keep civilization from falling due to the punch. It can rock and stagger from whatever blow may come, but if civilization keeps its feet, the odds are much better of coming through whatever transition about as painlessly as possible. If civilization hits the mat, it will likely be a long while before it regains its feet.

It's been said that something that can't continue forever, won't. When things break down, it won't be pretty, but it's absolutely imperative to keep things from devolving into complete lawlessness. Be active in your community, get to know your neighbors. Various disasters have shown that people can band together in times of duress. Wherever happens, wherever the telling blow comes from, it's the job of the militia to keep civilization standing, because the alternative is worse.

As a side note, the relative armament of the USA, combined with the ingenuity and production capacity, would allow the militia could well and truly ruin anyone mad enough to invade's day. but that's not really their most pressing job, with the state of the world and the military and everything else.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

I have a giant folder of GURPS 4e books I got from somewhere. I've been going through and trying to buy the real deal of any book that I find myself using regularly (which is a frighteningly large amount. My players are welcome and encouraged to use ANY book, in part because using other books means they actually are reading the rules and putting thought into their character).

I have the first two GURPS power ups, but have never taken a look at them until just recently, thinking they were Superhero genre stuff, which isn't of much interest to me.

I was mistaken.

Power Ups I; Imbuements is nice, gives options for people that can supercharge whatever weapon they use, where the ridiculous power is in the user, not the weapon. Good for high fantasy and whatnot. Didn't read through the whole one

But Power Ups II; Perks? Reading through it, I feel like I'd be tempted to spend 1/4 to 1/2 of a character's points on perks.Some of them offer significant benefits for the cost, and others just round out a character nicely.

There are apparently a TON of GURPS: Power Ups books, and they're pretty cheap for each. They will probably be consulted any time I'm building a character now if I'm not barred from using them. If you haven't taken a look at them, reconsider.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

I'd embed the youtube video here but the blogger thing for doing it isn't working, and I don't feel like bothering with doing it manually, just click the link.

Basically it's a bullet cut into three parts, that spin out from the rifling and are held together by wires to a central shaft. The reasoning is to give a shotgun like spread that never spreads too far, and doesn't need much distance to reach its spread. I'll have to see some ballistics tests before I'm convinced.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Between impossible-to-find ammo, my rifle being presently disassembled (but paying for itself by doing so, woo engineering aftermarket parts. Go throw money at Tandemkross so they can pay me to make more cool stuff), I can't remember the last time I hit the range. I know I went a couple times this past summer and once at some point with my bf.

Here's some motivation, for me and anyone like me who's inspired to train by the knowledge that somewhere, someone is better.

I am not this fast, with either pistol or rifle (although my handgun draw is darn fast). This is unacceptable. In a vaguely related matter, so much for the GURPS: Tactical Shooting rule that all gasmasks prohibit the use of all sights. Some gasmasks don't work with sights, but at least SOME are clearly usable!

Again, not that good, which is unacceptable. I need to practice with my Glock 17. Got it in ~March, and have only shot it once because I couldn't find/afford ammo. Was quite grateful to the gun shop owner for setting aside a box for me when I ordered the gun so I'd have something to try it with.

As a heads up, within my family, I'm basically noncompetitive by comparison. Outside of my family, I'm probably among the most competitive people you will ever meet. On the plus side, the power of ridiculous levels of competitiveness can drive me to be ridiculously good at anything I actually care about being good at.

A little while back, I started contemplating building an AR-15. I started looking into the finer details, and mentioned that if anyone had any tips they'd be much appreciated.

Suddenly, everyone everywhere who writes about guns began posting guides for building an AR-15.
Bloggers, magazines, everything short of a TV documentary started talking about their process for building a great gun.

The only other thing I would use the money for at present is a 3D printer, and the software I tried to buy for 3D modelling is/was useless. No working modelling software, no point in a 3D printer.

Clearly, it's a sign that it's time to build an AR-15 (or it's just that I would really like one and coincidences seem to support my desire when viewed in a slightly superstitious manner... nah, must be a sign)

Sunday, January 5, 2014

When you get to a system with as many rulebooks as GURPS, you're bound to wind up with some overlap. The basic set gives a template for Dwarves. So does Dungeon Fantasy. They are both significantly different. And of course, every setting decides they're going to do it differently, so my dwarves for the Wastelands are also slightly different. This difference happens elsewhere too (how many types of elves are there? Shoemaker elves who are more like gnomes from the standard fantasy template, wood elves, high elves, etc) but dwarves are the fantasy race I am most likely to play, for a variety of reasons.

Basic set dwarves are, far as I can tell, the dwarves from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Diminutive, with stubby arms and legs, gold sensitivity, and resilient health. Good vision in the dark, high strength for their size, and long lives round them out. Given stats for the template are as follows

I'd actually thought that they had Dwarfism for their SM -1, which would kind of make sense, but it seems the template doesn't use that. They're typically strong enough to still use standard gear, despite being smaller (which is good, as Basic Set gives no rules for smaller gear). Despite their smaller size, these dwarves can go fast, as they do not have the reduced move found in dwarves in many settings.

The Dungeon Fantasy dwarves are those one might find in D&D. They keep the same resilient health, but they're big. What size they lose in height, they gain right back in width, maintaining their SM 0 status, and ability to use full size weapons. They lose their gold sense, but pick up greed instead to show their love of wealth. Extra toughness and a natural ability to carry weight balance out slower movement due to their broad builds. Given template stats are

Finally, we get to my dwarves. Similar to the dungeon fantasy dwarves, the dwarves of the Wasteland have a few things others don't. Many settings give dwarves the ability to see in total darkness, either by darkvision, or by thermographic vision. A combination of infravision and night vision seemed to make the most sense, particularly for masters smiths, where the ability to see something's color would be of great benefit, and ability to navigate one's way out of a lightless cave could be the difference between life and death. I'll go into a LOT more detail of their history and traditions, but here's my template just for a glance.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Gerber Multi-Pliers 600
This thing's nice. It's a good, tough, locking multitool for not a lot of money. I have the blunt tip one, but otherwise the same.Works pretty well at everything, wish it had a few more tools since it comes with a belt/MOLLE holster. It's thin enough to fit in a pocket, and well set with the basic tools, but a few extras would be nice. Still wishing someone would make a standard multitool with a hammer on it like the Leatherman MUT without the price tag.

Fury Tactical 2 Dive Knife
Just got this recently, seems pretty nice. Blade is very thin, great for stashing wherever, but the sheathe leaves something to be desired. It's thicker than it needs to be, for such a low profile knife, and while it holds the blade firmly it allows for some rattle. At least for my hands, the grip is too short for how thin it is, it makes me want to use a grip that won't work. The included straps are fairly long, but not long enough to fit where I want to put it, which is right along my upper thigh (at least for swimming. I hate not having a knife, particularly in the water). It fits low on the thigh, just above the knee, and rides incredibly comfortably on the calf like a boot knife. If you have a Cold Steel ti-lite, this is nearly that size, but with a shorter grip.

Basically, truck tracks have been around a while. They're good for snow and ice and anywhere you want a wide footprint. However, so far you always have to bring the thing into the garage (presumably if conditions are bad enough to warrant tracks it's a tad difficult to do the work outside), jack the thing up, pull the wheels off, and bolt on the track system. Now there's one that you just drive up onto like a ramp, and your wheel drives the track, which drives the truck.Their may or may not be a step of locking the tracks to the tires, they didn't show it in the first half of the demonstration video.

Other than the overly dramatic soundtrack, a reasonably good video, although they don't show any of the process of locking the tracks in place, if there is any such process.

Friday, January 3, 2014

I'm presently trying to build a tiny character, SM -3 relative to the rest of the humanoids in the party. He rides a warboar (a constant companion ally worth a LOT of points), and uses a lance. But here's the problem I face. It's all well and good, making a character is fine, but in terms of strength and dex and such, I'm basing him on the Basic Set house cat (BS 456). Based on this, he'd be ST 4, or 6 to be fairly burly for his size. But he wields a lance, which requires ST 12 according to normal rules. The GURPS Character Assistant has rules for modifying equipment to be larger or smaller, but they only affect price and weight. So, that lance requiring strength 12, still requires strength 12 to wield when scaled down to the size of a beefy meercat. Thus far my efforts to find where the rules for modifying equipment for different size modifiers has been in vain. The GCA has some issues with things, so I suspect that the minimum ST should be reduced accordingly.

Setting 10 as "average" for a scaled down campaign works just fine, my problem is having a very small character able to dish out damage comparable to that of his larger companions by virtue of the power of his mount. I can't very well have a meercat have ST 12 where ST 10 is a human. If there are rules for it, I'd like to use those, instead of just arbitrarily declaring that it works

In case you were wondering, I'm building a twisted knight version of Timon and Pumba for the randomly-generated fantasy campaign I mentioned a while back.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Just graduated, now job hunting. Got a couple of offers, and now I have to check out the gun laws for wherever the job offers come from. WI isn't amazing, but it's actually better than just about everywhere in the vicinity (which is weird, since it's pretty reliably a blue state because of Madison and Milwaukee, even though the rest of the state is red).

Right now I'm looking at Michigan, not really well enthused by the handgun registration and requirement to renew carry permits every 5 years.

They keep testing gun myths. On TV. And finding by and large the myths, including those pushed by the media, are wrong

-Suppressors are not a magical mute button that screws onto the end of a gun
-Spray Firing From The Hip is completely and totally useless if you actually want to hit anything
-Intermediate calibers are not "so powerful that hunters don't use them to avoid destroying the game", and are in fact nowhere near as powerful as most hunting rounds.

I'm sure there are others. At some point if I'm feeling ambitious I might try to find the scenes from all the shows and cut them into one big video. It's one thing to have the John Q. Random on the internet tell you you're wrong, that can be easily deflected by reality denial, but having the mythbusters inform you that you're wrong and an idiot (with results that were aired on national TV)? More effective.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Congrats on another trip 'round the sun since we agreed on how we were counting, Earth. In honor of this event, like many people, I'll make some resolutions. Unlike most such people, I'll actually keep them.

First off is the same one from last year. Reach the physical condition to meet the entry standards of any branch of the United States military's special forces. Nice to have explicit goals to hit rather than a general "be in shape". Being in shape is where I try to always be, so it's not even a goal (although I have some work to get back there. Stupid surgery and/or doc's orders against working out).

Next, martial training. Throughout college I've had a hard time keeping my skills up at martial arts (although out of shape, out of practice, and on legs that can barely hold me up I can reliably take on all comers with little difficulty). Paintballing will be done much more now that I'm closer to the team, because force on force gunfighting (particularly if I can work out a custom gun I'm working on, will have 30 round standard STANAG size magazines, so I can practice fighting with a gun that actually shoots where I aim and has the right amount of ammo). Once I find a job, I'll be able to afford ammo if I can ever find it, and I intend to hit the range a heck of a lot more often.

Finally, I resolve to manage my time effectively. Active time (work, paintball, building big and/or complicated things, gaming, etc) will be most of the time, with managed downtime (meditative things like drawing, inventing, and reading). Pending testing, the starting balance point will be set at 5 active to 2 passive.